Even the biggest brands need to constantly reinvent themselves. For some of the world’s major media conglomerates, that occurs every time they post a new video on social media.
Each new post is another chance to redefine their offerings and reestablish their values.
In terms of views and virality, two of the most successful organizations we’ve seen are AMC Networks and McClatchy.
As media conglomerates, they have the manpower and financial support to post dozens of videos a day, securing each of them some of the top spots in Tubular’s monthly leaderboards.
They may have different properties and topic areas, but they’ve got a lot in common. We’ve scoured Tubular data to offer a rundown of what these two conglomerates are doing to stay on top.
As one of the Top Media Conglomerates, AMC Aims for One Big Hit at a Time
With a yearly revenue of $2.9 billion, AMC Networks is one of the largest entertainment companies in America.
With ownership in four cable channels, four online streaming services, and dozens of entertainment brands, this conglomerate is fully tuned-in to the digital age.
While Tubular shows 25 different content creators under this organization’s digital video umbrella, just one name appears again and again.
Within this mainly-Facebook content selection, The Walking Dead dominates with multiple millions of views in July 2019 alone:
- Fear the Walking Dead, 36.9M
- The Walking Dead, 16.7M
- Braxton Family Values, 1.4M
- BBC America, 1M
- IFC Films, 625K
Also among the top 20 are Breaking Bad, its spinoff Better Call Saul, and Neurotica. But even these recognizable show names pale in comparison to The Walking Dead, which has spiked in views this summer thanks to sneak peeks of the upcoming 10th season.
Looking back at all of AMC’s top videos for the past two years, The Walking Dead sneak preview for Season 10 is one of the most-viewed videos on any of its channels, but it’s a Fear the Walking Dead Season 5 peek that landed at the top with 23M views:
AMC’s high viewership shows us that even if you are juggling multiple properties, you only need one big hit to succeed at a time. This is a strategy that organizations of any size can take.
If one property has hit the target, it’s OK to allocate more resources toward making it the best it can be. When the hype dies down, it’s time to move onto another property to try again.
On a related note, check out our TV Entertainment Market Snapshot!
McClatchy Touts Local News for a Winning Video Strategy
With bureaus in Washington DC and around the country, McClatchy is one of the biggest names in news.
It oversees 29 daily newspapers in 14 states, adding up to an average weekday circulation of 1.6 million and Sunday circulation of 2.4 million.
In the internet age, its digital audience far exceeds its print one. McClatchy’s 44 social video creators earned 11.3M views on YouTube and 4.8M views on Facebook in July 2019.
Here are their five most-viewed creators, based on how many views they received on YouTube (their most-frequented platform) in July 2019:
- Miami Herald, 4M
- El Nuevo Herald, 1.6M
- The State Newspaper, 1.2M
- The Sacramento Bee, 813K
- Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 503K
From the Idaho Statesman to the Kansas City Star, you’ll find many of America’s most-recognized newspapers under McClatchy’s content umbrella. As expected, many of their top-viewed social videos are just the facts, from news at the city, state, and national level, to sports outcomes, to historical event retrospectives.
McClatchy’s most successful videos aren’t the ones with the biggest audiences; national political news is often popular but not consistently. Instead, the most successful videos from this conglomerate are intimately local.
Their top video in the past year, from Kentucky.com with 11.9M views, is simply a three-year-old delighted by his family singing him “Happy Birthday.”
The conglomerate has the range and manpower to cover all the biggest stories, but sometimes it’s attention to the small stuff that has the biggest online impact.
Curious to see what other media conglomerates are doing with online video?